“It had to be a controlled demolition! Palpatine must have known!”

Three Imperial stormtroopers discuss the destruction of the Death Star on the first anniversary of its exploding:

Of course Palpatine must have known! The logic is inescapable. Why else would Darth Vader have been in his Tie fighter and not in the Death Star when Luke Skywalker blew it to kingdom come? Personally, I always thought it was because he was needed as the villain for the next couple of movies and so he had to escape, but that’s just me.

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This clip seems to be floating around a lot. I always did think it ironic that from a certain point of view, the destruction of the death star was essentially a group of desert-based rebels flying planes into an important governmental structure, leading to it’s destruction…

I had my first lengthy discussion with a 9/11 conspiracy nut the other day. It was pretty weird. I started off by mentioning to him that I know a guy who was in the pentagon when the plane hit and another who saw the plane — and then the “truther” proceeds to tell me all about how it wasn’t a plane and that my friends must be part of the conspiracy, too. Al Jazeera, too? Yep! Even Bin Laden was part of the conspiracy. I was awestruck by the stupid. I still am.

I had my first lengthy discussion with a 9/11 conspiracy nut the other day. It was pretty weird. I started off by mentioning to him that I know a guy who was in the pentagon when the plane hit and another who saw the plane — and then the “truther” proceeds to tell me all about how it wasn’t a plane and that my friends must be part of the conspiracy, too. Al Jazeera, too? Yep! Even Bin Laden was part of the conspiracy. I was awestruck by the stupid. I still am.

That is pretty awe-inspiring.

If you wanted to see him froth at the mouth for hours on end, a mention of the Popular Mechanics debunkings would have done the trick.

I always find 9/11 troofers to be the ultimate ‘rubber duck’ arguers amongst the spectrum of pseudoscience. Even hardcore creationists will occasionally acknowledge that you actually said something, but troofers seem utterly resistant to engaging in a two way discussion of any kind.

The most bizarre claims I’ve seen are around the temperature of the rubble weeks after the collapse. Apparently this is obvious evidence the explosives were used.. if anyone can work out how this argument is meant to work even in theory I’d like to know!

The most bizarre claims I’ve seen are around the temperature of the rubble weeks after the collapse. Apparently this is obvious evidence the explosives were used.. if anyone can work out how this argument is meant to work even in theory I’d like to know!

No, that’s supposedly evidence that thermite was used to melt the steel columns (ignoring the fact that thermite melts down through metal, and so can’t be used to melt vertical columns). The theory goes that there wasn’t enough oxygen underground to sustain fires for weeks/months (ignoring the history of underground coal fires that burn on for years), so it was tons and tons of molten steel radiating heat that kept the rubble warm.

But there are many claims that are a lot weirder than that:

1) Exotic energy beam weapons were involved in the destruction of the towers.

2) That the dust clouds trailing behind falling chunks of rubble were actually the rubble being turned into dust by said energy beams.

3) That the towers had already been packed with powdered rust, and that when the planes impacted they instantly turned to aluminum dust and mixed with the rust dust to form thermite.

4) That the Boeings used by commercial airliners would have gone *splat* against the towers like a bug against a windshield since they were made of aluminum, which means that the Boeings which hit the towers must have been military ones which are made of much stronger stuff than aluminum.

5) That the towers had had explosives placed in them when they were built. According to this theory, the towers didn’t have cores made up of steel columns, but a conventional concrete core, with the concrete’s rebar being coated with C4. There was a documentary about the concrete cores made sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, but then the Conspiracy erased the documentary from existence and made up the lie that the cores of the towers were just steel beams.

1) Exotic energy beam weapons were involved in the destruction of the towers

That would go hand-in-hand with the theory that no actual planes crashed into the towers, and that what people saw flying over New York City and into the towers were actually highly-sophisticated holograms.